AI Changes for monster/henchmen 10/31..for the worse?

Have you read this thread? This has just changed.

At least this shows that they're reading the posts on here. I haven't tested it yet, but the "too-easy" factor was a concern, and I'm glad they've done something about it. If there's still issues with the AI, maybe there's some more tweaking to be done.

well i really can't say the AI bothers me too much as i can usually get the kiter crippled and kill him. the real thing that bothers me is that the brawler hench along with koss seem to just run striahgt into the middle of a mob far from the rest of us. The hench does this much more than koss but its still annoying. it also makes pulling annoying as hell.

http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10067867

Yeah, I'm having this problem as well, except I've noticed it on many different henchies/heroes... Dunkuro will cast and cancel a skill repeatedly until he has no energy left... I've seen the Shock Henchman in Factions to repeatedly cast-cancel Lightning Orb until he has no energy... and also the Motivation Henchman I've seen cast-cancel Ballad of Restoration repeatedly until he's drained too... What's up with this... It's quite annoying to go into a short battle only to realize that your Monk has just drained his 40 energy in under 3 seconds... Does anyone else experience this issue? Because I'd say, AI aside, its a major problem.

someone mentioned above about Minions not moving and staying beside you, not attacking, even when clicking, etc.... i have this same problem.. any idea why this is happening? it's makin them useless...

Yea, I've seen it happen several times and wondered "What the...?".

Earth henchie is so far the worst at it, but I've had a couple of situations where every single henchie and hero blitz there energy just as the pull charges us. I was grouped with a friend and we had to flee back laughing as the AI had no power left to fight on. Good for laughs, bad for progress.

Other than that, loving the AI... few tweaks here and there should fix that though.

The AI canceling of skills repeatedly has been in the game for almost a week now. Here's a thread I made in gwonline that, strangely, nobody has replied to.

http://forums.gwonline.net/showthread.php?t=426645

As for the current AI, no wonder. I loved the hero/hench AI since the udpate (with the exception of the canceling), but for some reason yesterday, AI's were acting so retardedly (both hench and enemy). They seriously need to fix this... I couldn't kill some casters because they kept on running across the map to a group of 3 enemies that I couldn't aggro (or do aggro and die)...

What as of 23:00 GMT i.e. last night it was still doing this? Has it changed today?

Yeah I believe the updates happen during GMT night, not sure though. Usually the updates are there in the morning for me (GMT+1). Anyway, I know exactly what you meant - using Koss to gather about 10 monsters than let the ele hero unleash Rodgort's on them was great. Well I tried this new update only briefly, on notebook at school, but the fights that were easy before are now...interesting Like a monk hero (passive mode) running around in circles the whole time, two monsters behind him/her.

I've had exactly the opposite experience with my MM. For 2-3 hours Sunday afternoon I ran all around the areas around Sunspear Sanctuary with 3 heroes and 4 henchies with no problems at all. Never lost a henchie or hero until right at the end and never drew unwanted aggro. I'm not sure that I ever personally even drew aggro. Basically just spam animates and run to the next carnage.

Haven't played my healer monk on the NF mainland yet though.

I know Anet wants to test different stuff. And I know they're hard pressed to push out a chapter every six months. But for what's sake, hire some testers already!
Yeayea, they have testers for this and that, but the AI before NF was bust. The AI after was mostly great. Now we're back in the old AI, they didn't even try to tweak the NF release AI to be more coherent, no as we now see, we're back to chasing mobs around and NPC spikes that detonate on the henchies and you're SOL.
Unless they thought that it was an emergency to get the NF AI out of the system to rework it.

Just to recap:
* Healers/Casters running a marathon every time anyone as much as looks at them
* Mobs spiking like only AI can
* Warriors left stranded as the mobs sprint past them to chase around Drunko and Mhelon
* Minions doing nothing but looking pretty, well, now when the mob train hits my necro I can at least Taste death in the hopes that I don't
* The instant you click on any AOE skills, the mobs scatter, I call it the Ms. Cleo effect, or rather, at least the mobs are real psychics
* New abusable AI, strip down naked, get Prot spirit and some Enchantment stacks on you and tank the night away!
* My pet occasionally now bugging out and just standing around like Minions, related? no idea, it just stands there and howls (this is rare though, only happened to me three times so far)(not the howling, the bugging out)
* And then there's the clickety click cancel this cancel that, oopsie, no more juice, get a mesmer to tap dance on your grave to your incessant clicking will you

Sigh, it's the little things, you know.

I have seen several changes in Prophesies since NF came out. I get kicked out of the game a lot more, err 007. The monsters scatter way too easy. Now just targeting sends them running, don't have to activate the skill, just target. No need to take warriors in group any more, they can't hold aggro. Just load up on casters that are targeted more now, and hope to throw down enough damage to kill 1 or 2 monsters before dieing.

Game is starting to suck for me.

Before the 10/31 update -

They balled up nicely on my tank, and didnt run away while I kept nuking happily.

Now -
They conveniently IGNORE my tank and head straight to my healer hero/hench, who goes into a hysteria running mad and aggroing other groups.


Needless to say, I'm not amused.

I helped a guildie run 4 of his characters from LA to Kamadan last night and never had a problem with this quest. He had an ele, a warrior, an assassin, and a mesmer. I was using a MM for three of them and my ele for one run and like I said, no problems. The only thing I even thought was unusual was one time a grasp of insanity and one of the eles ran out of a meteor shower a little better than I expected.

That explains my somewhat surprised look the second i went to farm Lightbringer Points. The day before i was mowing through it and it was okay. But today, well... within a matter of seconds Dunkoru dropped, than i got spiked and the show was over a few seconds later.
I was like "Dude, bad hair day?" and logged out.
It's not fun at all. It's downright frustrating, especially with the amount of mobs in GuildWars. Basically every mob has the potential to instant wipe you in a matter of 1-2 seconds in the later game and since the latest update - they do so. It's like every single partymember is getting spiked, crippled and interrupted at the same time.
Frustrating :/

Time to learn to play pvp. No more tanks. Use frenzy for warrior and deal massive dmg. Sprint is a must. Bring various wards to counter mobs, have a trapper as well. Give your healers tanking skills. You have to play pvp. Watch the gamespot video review for guild wars. It PUSHES you toward end game pvp. The only end game in guild wars is pvp. If you dont want to pvp, get through the story and find another game.

ANET wants you all to go play pvp. They want to get rid of the traditional rpg where your warrior just tanks and your nukers can sit back and nuke. If you have a problem with that, just find something else to play.

That's the message I'm getting from anet

Na...
A-Net wouldn't kill PVE. They did many things that actually helped the PVE in Nightfall. The AI is currently in a state of tweaking and the current change is obviously a mess. That's why it is in a state of tweaking so A-net can fix the mess.
It's just currently downright frustrating in PVE. It's like fighting a top 10 Guild which has double the attributes, 4 times the damage and reflexes. Anyways, flaming won't help on the issue, we can just voice our concerns and critics about the AI and hope A-Net notices this.

You forgot about half hex duration in prophecies bosses, uber armor, increased health, unreal amount of energy on bosses, and the ability to run back and hide behind 2x or more mobs.

Thats not really true. This would have been perfectly acceptable and made sense if you were fighting a mob of similar size of your party of comparable strength. In PvE, warriors tank because you are facing 10 level 28 demons who would pretty much insta-gib a 60AL squishie.

Thus, the divide between PvE and PvP.

In that case, lol, the AI has a long way to go. It's still nowhere near what I have ever experienced in PvP to this day. The mobs are so exploitable it's not funny, their builds suck, they will "kite" out of their support range, they are able to be lured to waste their interrupts on non-crucial skills.
The AI doesn't even learn. All in all, if Anet's goal is that PvE should prepare you to PvP, then, a player who never played any PvP, but only PvE, could expect the following:

* If you attack a caster, they will run away and away and die alone, and aggro possibly another group
* Interrupt everything
* Only equip at most four skills
* If you are not sure you want to use a skill at a given time, activate it, but cancel it right away, then do it all again, find that clickey rhythm!
* When hit by AOE, hit with attack, run away, come back, run away, come back, run away, come back, run away
* If bodyblocked, stay there and do nothing, maybe spinning around in place
* Blind the monks
* If you are a beast master ranger, make sure your pet is not attacking
* Frenzy and Healsig, ok, kinda below the waist here
* Just Frenzy
* Use Healing touch on everything
* Use up your energy healing NPCs and minions
* Cast through Backfire
* Ignore such Hexes as Diversion, Spirit of Failure, Spirit shackles, Empathy etc
* Ignore such conditions such as Blinded, Dazed, Poisoned
* Spam Exhaustion spells
* If any of your party members moves, immediately break combat
* If any of your party members starts to fall back, adamantly stay and fight
* Use Glyph of Energy on Flare
* Spike within 2 seconds or more
* When not being able to hit a target due to Enchantments, Stances, spam your skills and do not change target
* If a party member dies, begin resurrection immediately, or, don't and just stand there
* Trigger all traps you saw being set up a moment ago
* If severely injured, stand your ground, your monk is running around somewhere out of range anyway
* If your team consists of a Minion master, be sure to grab all the bodies with Wells
* Sacrifice yourself to death if anyone has less than 80% energy
* Attack through Ineptitude, every time
* When constantly being interrupted by a ranger, do not attempt to gain no LOS

These are just the few tips I have gathered along my 18 month game play experience in GW PvE. I feel I am ready to challenge the top heights of PvP.
Tremble ye, o tremble!

ROFLMAO....can't....stop....laughing!
Anyways...PvE will NEVER be the same as PvP, trying to half integrate PvP mechanics into PvE will just frustrate players more than anything else.

PvE IS PvP now, or at least that's what anet is trying to do.
But think about this, if the creatures are THAT intelligent, then each battle will take a mindlessly long time, and think of this ANET, you have 100 mobs on a map. How much fun is it when each battle takes as long as a RA battle, or a HA battle. and you have to look forward to another one 5 seconds down the map.

This new update basically took the fun of watching the monster drop and heading off to take another one off, now you take forever to kill the group, if they don't get you first, and hope the next won't, leading you to spend in escess of 3 hours on 1 map to get to the next area. Not very bright on ANET's side if you ask me.

BTW anet, people do not play pve so the monsters are super intelligent, we know they're ai, and not supposed to be super good, they do have a challenge even if they arn't super smart, it still takes skills. But with this new update there is no way in hell anyone can play their role as it's meant to be.

If this is how you mean the game, then ele's are no longer a spellcasting class, they are officially a rag doll meant to be thrown around while the warriors do the damage since they will not be getting hit. Spellcasters had it hard enough before this with long cast times, Ele's most of all. Now, how are you supposed to cast these fire spells while mobs are spiking you, and then head for your monks after you are dead?

I did about 100 battles today against some of the same and some different creatures, every single time, the first creature to go down, was me. Even if i sent my hero's off into battle and i stayed back a little bit, the monsters bypassed every single one of them, and spike'd me for too much damage to be healed by the monks.
-After that, they spiked a monk
-Then another monk
-Until the last 2 standing, were the DERV and the FIGHTER...

my point proven in that last statement.



AGAIN - people do not play pve for it to be pvp, we don't want to spend 3-4 hours just getting to the next TOWN. If this is not fixed, i'm afraid it is the downfall of the once glorified ANET

That's funny...isn't that what you used to do to them in PvE?

Personally, I like the changes. Yes, it changes the mechanics of the game to where certain characters are no longer highly effective in their boring, old cookie-cutter roles.

However, it also adds another dynamic and makes PvE more difficult. People may call it "more time consuming", but the simple fact that you often die when you enter into a PvE situation (when you used to sit back and nuke to your heart's content) is a GOOD thing for the game.

And this comparison that "PvE = PvP" is not accurate. It's more along the lines of "player PvE is now = monster PvE". You both have the same tactics now.

yes it's a good thing, but you have to think about the spellcasting, almost all fire spells take at least 2 seconds, which you don't have while you're the target of their dmg. To keep this change, means to lower the required casting time to a maximum of 2 seconds for even the most dangerous of spells, or the caster will never get them off.

This of course would ruin the balance of the game, throwing things into an uproar... just like now?

And most don't have 3-4 hours per map to get to a next town.

I can just see the teams as of this update.
- groups of 8 w/mo's
- advertising of "nuker" or "ss/mm" or "prot/heal" are laughed at
- anything other than 8 w/mo's get's targetted and spiked to death instantly.

Not true....we don't have lvl 24-28, with double health, insane armor, uber dmg spells, rigged dmg spells (like bosses), inhuman reflex, etc.

Every caster hero and henchmen I have used has done this since the release of Nightfall. Earth henchie, Cynn, Mhenlo, Eve, Tahlkora, Dunkoro, Zhed, etc. I find elementalist primaries do this the most though, especially with Glyphs. It's a serious problem that keeps them useless for at least 5 seconds.

My guess is that the minion AI is not registering a battle is happening. The biggest evidence of this is when I run out of aggro of the enemy. My example:

I was doing a quest and my minions aggroed a large amount of enemies because they were chasing kiting casters. So I pulled away with my Heroes and henchmen so I didn't fail the quest by dying. We all successfully pulled away so we weren't surrounded... even the minions. The minions regrouped away from the enemies. Not around me, not continued to fight, they just regrouped by themselves away from everything else. This left me and my henchmen to kill the enemies that chased me. Once the mobs were all dead, then the minions came back to me. 1 Flesh Golem, 4 Shambling Horrors, and 5 Bone Fiends all made useless for some reason.

This also explains why lots of my minions run back to me after they kill an enemy in a group. They're not going from one enemy to the next like they use to. They just don't seem to understand that a battle is still going on.

Truthfully I don't mind the idea that "tanks" may be less useful now. I rather play an offensive warrior anyways, that's why my warrior isn't my primary character anymore. It makes sense, though it is quite overdone in the current situation.

The problem I am having is that everything goes for one target at a time. I am lucky enough that my main character has now become my monk so I am pretty use to having to deal with healing spike damage, and my protection monk helps tremendously and is able to keep the group alive by herself when it's not the higher lvl mobs, but when playing my MM it is ridiculous to watch my henchmen/Hero monks go crazy and not able to do anything. It doesn't help that minion AI is clearly bugged and I can't keep them alive because I'm too targeted to safely use BotM now.

And I do agree with what someone said about the advantages of being a backline caster compared to a frontline melee with these new changes. Anyone trying to play a war, sin, dervish, etc with the new AI has it a lot worse than anything I have been dealing with so far.

I can't do Arborstone on my own becouse healer henchman dont heal Danika. Or Danika don't heal herself.

Its because the healer are too busy kiting like mad thx to the mob rushing straight to her/him. The heal keep coming too late, died so many times because of that.

Monk henchmen die in 3 hits wtf?

I don't like this new update, the monsters attack casters all the time so there's no need in wearing any armor while being warrior in the first place.

The uber GW Faction dmg seems to be back again as well... (- 600 dmg thnx to Meteor, monks dying in 3 hits, unlimited energy etc)

Why is A-net making PvE like PvP? I'm playing PvE cause I hate PvP... And this new (again) sucky update makes things so friggin hard, caster henchies are kinda useless now since they get killed before even having the time to cast -_-

i guess it's fortunate my main character I play is a monk. Much easier for me to keep my heroes/henchies alive than it is for my monk AI to keep me or themselves alive - although it seems a vast improvement over previous chapters.

While I haven't played pve since the oct 31 miniupdate (busy farming candy corn potions lol), I can't believe that the basic routines or thought process behind "Monster AI" is so ridiculous.

First it's "go for the highest armor" player, and now from the stories here it seems to go for the lowest armored human player? I mean, there's "focus firing" and then there's doing your job by spreading the damage and interrupts. Does the AI no longer take into account the aggro bubble, closest target, and other factors that the old pre-NF AI used to consider? It's hard to believe that anet would reduce the AI to such crude simplistic instructions as "every single mob target the highest armor player" or "everyone mob the lowest armor human player". Combine that with "monks stay alive at all costs, with running being your first option" and it's a recipe for disaster.

I play monk 90% of the time, and it's a balancing of priorities between keeping myself alive and keeping the party alive. An "intelligent" monk knows that without her party and damage dealers, she might as well sit down and die ( or run away). But where's the "team" when your stupid AI monk (enemy or hero) goes sprinting off into the distance completely ditching their team? That's only what seriously inexperienced monks do in pvp. Self preservation is important, but not at the expense of the party.

It seems anet has pushed the monk AI way too far into the solo self-preservation corner.

Elruid has made a nice summary of some of the advantages we still have over AI in PvE, so I think that a few "buffs" on their end aren't as dramatic as our advantages...

I strongly suggest that people send an email to Anet. I sent a report through their customer support on their site with a link to this thread and mentioning the tons of posts made on gwonline. This AI "update" is making the game unplayable on a game I bought less than a week ago and I am pissed...

Seriously, email Anet. How many times have you seen AI updates get reverted back? Never. They never reverted any updates. Granted, none of the AI changes were this bad, but somehow, I seriously doubt Anet will revert back to the working AI. Unless you guys start making your voices be heard (and not by just posting here), I just don't see Anet reverting back.

I want my money back if this is the garbage I have to put up with...

what? how does improved AI lessen the server load? and how does server load make less spending?

How long does it usually take for them to post the changes they made in the update on their website?

Normally instant.
But around a game release they don't seem to bother updating it. It's been this way with factions, prophecies and with Nightfall. Probably would be too much updating in the first few days to keep up with anyways.

I liked the AI change when Nightfall launched - sure it broke some farming builds, but it was a step in the right direction and all played well and made GW a joy to play again. Last night's update totally undid all that as far as i can tell making every single encounter a tedious game of tag.

I'm all for improvment tweeks - but the Halloween update was a huge leap backwards. It needs to be rolled back and they can try again on improvements.

Ughhhhh.... The AI has gone from one extreme to another. After the NF release the AI was boringly easy as it would only target the warriors (or highest AL in the group). Now it only targets the lowest AL in the group but the hench/hero AI isn't equipped to deal with that kind of attention. Running around not using any skills is going to end ugly.

The whole AI is a mess now. I understand what Anet was trying to do but so far its a miserable failure. This needs to be rolled back to the AI prior to the NF release until they can properly test any further AI changes they make. I hate it when they use their live game world as a beta test for major changes such as this.

Darn it! Nightfall seems to be such a great game but the AI is sucking the fun right out of it.

Trust me, the "target highest AL" is almost needed at end game areas. Hench casters just can't deal with the rigged dmg aoe attack that the mob has. That is a fundamental difference between PvE and Pvp.

And... why the hell do warriors have high armor? It's because they're melee users, they are up front of a group and they are supposed to take the hits.

It's just common sense, you also wear a shield in front of you, instead is on your back, when you know that the damage is coming from the front.

Right now, it seems as if they should give monks 100 armor and the ability to wield a shield with req 8 healing prayers